debt, saving for emergencies and short-term goals, and investing for the long term.
You should be actively considering your financial plan alongside your business. Otherwise, the profits you earn can easily slip away, unaccounted for. The last thing you want is to put in all this effort to build your business, and start earning profits, only to realize you have no clue what’s happening to all the money you are making.
Developing the Personal Characteristics You Need for Success
Your journey to a successful side hustle is unique to you and what you ultimately want to accomplish. That said, there are four characteristics that I see over and over in the most successful entrepreneurs:
1 Patience, because great things need time.
2 Focus, because distraction deters from success.
3 Perseverance, because you’ll need to manage your emotions, make sacrifices, and keep going when it’s hard.
4 The right mindset, because all those dreams and goals you’ll accomplish start first in your head and in your heart.
These characteristics are core to your success, so keep them in mind as you work on your business. Create a plan to nurture them by reviewing your goals, working on your plans, staying motivated and inspired, and learning from the experiences of others.
Take Action
1 Plan out your personal finances. If you haven’t already, make time to lay out your financial plans while you work on your business. Include plans to budget, pay down debt, save, and invest. (If you need help, check out my first book: Clever Girl Finance: Ditch Debt, Save Money and Build Real Wealth.)
2 Create a priority list. If you are employed full-time, create an ongoing priority list of your work to-dos, keeping your deliverables and deadlines in mind. This way you can ensure nothing important falls to the side and threatens your employment status. Work on your side hustle around your full-time work schedule.
MEET CAMILLA BANKS
Camilla is a lover of all things home, as the founder of The MUTED Home (themutedhome.com) and HollandLUXE Properties (hollandluxeproperties.com). For over 10 years, she has consistently centered her life on the subject of home. Today, she runs both of her businesses with her husband, making it the perfect partnership. Their goal is to have their businesses work for them so they can pursue their hearts’ desires, and to that end, they are leveraging their skills and talents in business to live life on their own terms.
You run two successful businesses that both started as side hustles. Can you share a bit about them and why you started them? How did you make time while working full-time?
My first real business as a custom furniture designer in 2009 started off from my passion for wanting to create unique and exclusive pieces—I wanted to deliver the ideas I had in my head to other people. I worked on building my business during work (guilty!) and also after work, making deliveries in the evenings and working on marketing late into the night. Managing a business while doing my best to stay focused on my corporate job was very hard. Some days I’d be so sleepy and live off of coffee. Other days I’d be gentle with myself and work on my business for a few hours after work. I kept a pretty tight schedule. On the weekends I would actually rest, no phone calls, no consultations, and I was very strict on that.
Since then, my husband and I have rebranded our custom furniture company, now called The MUTED Home, into a quality beautiful home goods company.
I started my second business in real estate in order to create a secondary income and follow my passion for educating my clients on what it takes to get into their dream homes. Literally, the moment I was ready to sit for the state real estate exam, I was let go from my full-time job. I had never been so at peace being let go from my job because fortunately, I was already set up to make money to sustain myself since I had built my clientele over four years. It was just God’s divine timing. I remember my tax lady even threatened that if I came back one more year making the same money that I was making at my job, she’d refuse to do my taxes. Lucky for me, getting fired was the perfect push to make that leap. I remember telling a client that I was finally working as a full-time entrepreneur. She was blown away; she said she never knew I worked a corporate job because I was usually pretty available and attentive. I just always worked around my job.
Collectively, every day my husband and I are always busy running both businesses, but we work on a schedule to be most productive. We get up at a certain time, and we stop at a certain time. This helps to keep our focus on work during the day, and family time in the evenings.
What were the biggest fears you faced when you first got into business and how did those fears impact the progress you made initially?
One of the biggest fears I had, as I think with most people, was failing. I thought people would ask for all these qualifications (that I didn’t need) and I considered going back to school, which I’m glad I didn’t. I would spend as much time as possible trying to make everything perfect, but it was really procrastination out of fear. And then, of course, there were my money fears. I wasn’t confident that the money I was spending on the business would be worth it. Another fear I had at the time with my first business was that the industry was very male-dominated and oftentimes, I received crazy looks or people just didn’t want to work with me because I was a woman.
What did you do to tackle your fears as a new business owner, and how do you deal with fear now?
To tackle my fears, I actually just started “doing.” My favorite saying is “Done is better than perfect.” This is so true, as sometimes we need to just kick fear in the butt and keep moving, and that remains my mantra today. The things you think people are thinking of you, they most likely are not, and if they are, you should do what you need to anyway. You will never live a life where you are not being judged. Some days when I became discouraged, or when I had negative thoughts on whether or not I could do this, my husband was by my side. He was there to comfort me and encourage me to keep going, this is truly my calling, and things would soon work in my favor.
What are you most proud of, looking back at the progress you’ve made?
I’m proud of the education I received from working my full-time job in hospitality, as a hotel manager overseeing the day-to-day operations of the staff and guests. Although I wanted to quit, having that job taught me discipline, conflict resolution, and the key skills to ultimately operate my own business.
I’m also seriously so proud I had the nerve to take the heat of being talked about and navigate not getting the support I thought I’d have from friends and family (don’t get hurt over this). Every day, I’m still surprised at how far I’ve come, and I’m so very proud of the decisions and the sacrifices I’ve made. Now that my grandparents are older, I’m thankful I can fly home to Detroit for longer periods of time to help them. I’ve always wanted to be able to work from anywhere and to also have a business that can essentially run off delegation. Being able to teach others real estate, assist my clients with buying their homes, and watch the growing success of our new company, we feel so blessed to have this opportunity.
What advice would you give any woman who’s thinking about starting her side hustle or is working on growing her side hustle but is worried about the fear of failure?
